Brady Corporation (NYSE:BRC) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call May 22, 2024 10:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Ann Thornton - CFO
Russell Shaller - President and CEO

Conference Call Participants

Cashen Keeler - Bank of America
Steve Ferazani - Sidoti
Keith Housum - Northcoast Research

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Third Quarter 2024 Brady Corporation Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Ann, our CFO. Please go ahead.

Ann Thornton

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the Brady Corporation fiscal 2024 third quarter earnings conference call. The slides for this morning's call are located on our website at www.bradycorp.com/investors. We will begin our prepared remarks on Slide 3.

Please note that during this call, we may make comments about forward-looking information. Words such as expect, will, may, believe, forecast and anticipate are just a few examples of words identifying a forward-looking statement.

It's important to note that forward-looking information is subject to various risk factors and uncertainties, which could significantly impact expected results. Risk factors were noted in our news release this morning and in Brady's fiscal 2023 Form 10-K, which was filed with the SEC in September.

Also, please note that this teleconference is copyrighted by Brady Corporation and may not be rebroadcast without the consent of Brady. We will be recording this call and broadcasting it on the Internet. As such, your participation in the Q&A session will constitute your consent to being recorded.

I'll now turn the call over to Brady's President and Chief Executive Officer, Russell Shaller. Russel?

Russell Shaller

Thanks, Ann, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today.

We released our third quarter results this morning, and I'm thrilled to report a new company record high earnings per share this quarter. Both of our regional businesses performed well with total organic sales growth of 4.5%, improved gross profit margin to 51.6%, and we continued our strong cash generation.

Our teams are executing incredibly well and delivering great results despite sluggish economic conditions. We also returned funds to our shareholders through both our normal quarterly dividend and an increased amount of share buybacks.

This quarter, we purchased 863,000 shares or $50.4 million. We continue to view opportunistic share buybacks as an excellent way to deliver return to our shareholders and our purchases this quarter demonstrated this commitment. As part of our journey developing new technologies, we introduced several products this quarter.